The Cracks
by One day I'll be a dinosaur
Summary: Short angsty piece for BxM about Reid and Morgan during Emily's death.


We all wear different masks. We all become a different person when we're around different people. When Derek Morgan was around the BAU he became the muscle, the tough man that hid his brains and his sensitivity The team needed someone they could rely on, trust to help them out and protect them in the field. So he became the strong one, meanwhile the mask Reid wore around the team was the weak one. He became socially awkward, he became needy, dependant and he pretended he didn't have a lot of skills that he did. He was constantly surprised that nobody had noticed the picture of him eleven years old with his grinning mother at the ceremony where he was presented with his tenth degree black belt in karate. Although he could forgive them for not knowing that his scholarship at MIT had been for sports.

Every now and again the masks would crack or fall off completely. It was the death of Emily Prentiss that shook the core of the BAU team and what they thought about each other.

Morgan as the big strong tough guy, the solid foundation that the serenity of the BAU was built on fell apart. They thought they understood his grief and his need to find Doyle as some sort of revenge or penance for being too late. This was of course part of it. When his team needed him, the first time Emily had ever needed him, he had failed. Why was he still even on the team when they now had ample evidence of how pathetic and useless to the team he was.

He was their expert on obsessional crimes and bombs, but it would only take Reid five minutes to surpass him. So all he really had was his strength and his heart. He knew that he, out of all the team, he cared about the idea of a team the most.

It was on the eleventh week that Spencer realised what he was really doing. He was going to JJ's more to see how she was dealing with her grief, to compare to his own. He was going there because it was expected of him. He and JJ had always been pushed together while Reid had never seen anything special in their relationship. She wasn't what he wanted from a friend or a lover, in fact ever since she had had Henry it was almost like she was a one dimensional character who had no life or purpose outside of Henry. Spencer worried about her, for a woman to be defined by her child was unhealthy for all involved.

When he was with his friends he forgot about Emily but as soon as he was back with his team-mates, he remembered and he watched. He was good at watching and noticing as people fell apart. But he never really did anything about. He liked viewing the world as abstract, at not getting involved and he was shocked to look back at his behaviour and see the mask he wore at work. Spencer had had enough of pretending to care, to care about unsubs, victims, or the team. He knew he was bored and it was time to move on yet they wouldn't let him escape.

Emily's death showed the cracks in the team. It showed how Hotch's love hate relationship with his work. It showed that Rossi had more in his life than just work. It showed that Garcia was fickle and JJ disloyal. That feeling of family Derek had always assumed as being there was only really between him and Reid. And not wanting to confront the idea of being in love he had included the rest of the team. Forced them into the role of a family, something they were not. To be with Reid was to lose his BAU family.

They may have had closer bonds than other colleagues but in all honesty could he really say that if he had not worked with her would Derek really have been Emily's friend? Their work thrust them together, and he had let it kill her. The fact the seeds were sown long before she came to the BAU didn't matter. When Derek had still thought of them as a family he had cast himself in the role of eldest brother, protecting his younger siblings.

He had failed, and he watched hi family crumble around him, Reid stopped caring, Hotch left the country, nobody cared about Seaver so she moved on, Rossi was just Rossi, JJ tried to force her way back- expecting things to go back to normal, while Garcia used her computers a shield, never analysing her own actions or self.

His family was gone and it was all Derek's fault, if he had saved Emily then the cracks deep down would never have been seen. Derek had much guilt within him, but the major part was guilt that he wasn't upset that Prentiss died but upset at the consequences.


End file.
